User talk:Joris Gillis

I created my wikipedia account--Joris Gillis 18:46, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Welcome[edit]

Welcome!

Hello, Joris Gillis, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!

Thanks for your welcome, albeit a trifle late:-) I have long been supporting Wikipedia mentally, but I've only just started to be active during the last week, after a long period of slumber. --Joris Gillis 20:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, one little question I have...How did you find the reference desk on Wikipedia? --HappyCamper 19:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Today, I noticed the "Ask a question" link on the front page. In the 2 years I've been visiting Wikipedia, I never noticed it. It's rather strange that an encyclopedia offers a Question-Answer service. Not many people are expecting to find something like that on Wikipedia. The Reference desk doesn't seem to be very active (yet). --Joris Gillis 20:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isotope templates[edit]

Thank you for contributing to the the isotope templates and isotope tables. However, I have been unable to open the isotope tables after you changed the templates. Introducing complex recursive templates used thousands of times in an article may be extremely hard on the servers. Could you please go back and revert your changes? If you want to experiment, you may consider using template copies, not live templates, and keeping the experiments out of the main article space. For example, I believe User:Femto/templatedisotopetabledraft and User:Femto/templatedisotopetabledraft2 have served their purpose and are free game. And talk pages such as Talk:Isotope table (complete) and Template talk:Iso1 are always useful for discussing major changes. Thank you. --Eddi (Talk) 18:37, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

**Half-lives** (example: Gd)
¹⁴⁵Gd	< 1 day
¹⁴⁹Gd	1–10 days
¹⁴⁶Gd	10–100 days
¹⁵³Gd	100 days–10 a
¹⁴⁸Gd	10–10,000 a
¹⁵⁰Gd	10 ka–700 Ma
¹⁵²Gd	> 700 Ma
¹⁵⁸Gd	Stable

I'm very sorry about this inconvenience I'm causing. I had no idea that the impact would be that great. The templates should work in theory. It's a server-side CPU issue I think. I'll revert the changes. Again, my sincere appologies.--Joris Gillis 19:36, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Once the page is fully processed, Wikipedia seems to hold a compiled cache. Would it be OK to make the transition during a calm moment (not peak hour) or would that just lead to pointless overhead?--Joris Gillis 20:11, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In theory it looks very good, but recursivity or similar use of templates may be unpredictable with regard to consumption of resources – especially since the {{Iso1}} template is used several thousand times in the isotope tables. I'm not sure if it would help to do it out of peak hours either, because the resources don't seem to be allocated as you edit the templates, rather as you view the articles for the first time after the template has been edited, or as you edit the articles. The isotope table has been edited several times lately ([1]), and we can probably not constrain the editing to particular hours. Maybe the problem could be discussed at some template talk (e.g. here) or technical forum, and there could be another solution to the style issue. --Eddi (Talk) 22:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll copy the following paragraphs to Talk:Isotope table (complete). --Eddi (Talk) 22:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just found a solution. Version 1.6 of the MediaWiki-software introduced defaulting for parameters. The overhead is now virtually none: no need for nesting/logic--Joris Gillis 09:01, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great! With the title property we don't have to consult the colour chart all the time. I'll update the template instructions as necessary. --Eddi (Talk) 15:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you like it:-) But how about the double case? (Iso2) what should the title say? --Joris Gillis 16:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion continued at Talk:Isotope table (complete)#Alternatives for displaying colour legend. --Eddi (Talk) 22:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]